A week ago on March 26th Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian leader who has been imprisoned for ten years, called for a Third Intifada: a mass nonviolent uprising officially ending the charade of “peace negotiations,” and ending “all coordination with Israel” and turning “to the UN General Assembly and the rest of its agencies” to further Palestine’s bid for statehood.

Barghouti’s letter, read aloud during a rally in Ramallah, directly challenges the policy of Abbas and the Palestinian Authority for maintaining the occupation through their cooperation with Israel.

Yesterday the state of Israel punished Marwan Barghouti by placing him in solitary confinement.

Uri Avnery wrote The New Mandela on the eve of Land Day 2012. I urge everyone to read the entire article.

When the Oslo process died with the assassinations of Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, Marwan and his organization became targets. Successive Israeli leaders – Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon – decided to put an end to the two-state agenda. In the brutal “Defensive Shield operation (launched by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, the new leader of the Kadima Party) the Palestinian Authority was attacked, its services destroyed and many of its activists arrested.

Marwan Barghouti was put on trial. It was alleged that, as the leader of Tanzim, he was responsible for several “terrorist” attacks in Israel. His trial was a mockery, resembling a Roman gladiatorial arena more than a judicial process. The hall was packed with howling rightists, presenting themselves as “victims of terrorism”. Members of Gush Shalom protested against the trial inside the court building but we were not allowed anywhere near the accused.

Marwan was sentenced to five life sentences. The picture of him raising his shackled hands above his head has become a Palestinian national icon. When I visited his family in Ramallah, it was hanging in the living room.

He calls for a Third Intifada, a non-violent mass uprising in the spirit of the Arab Spring.

His manifesto is a clear rejection of the policy of Mahmoud Abbas, who maintains limited but all-important cooperation with the Israeli occupation authorities. Marwan calls for a total rupture of all forms of cooperation, whether economic, military or other.

A focal point of this cooperation is the day-to-day collaboration of the American-trained Palestinian security services with the Israeli occupation forces. This arrangement has effectively stopped violent Palestinian attacks in the occupied territories and in Israel proper. It guarantees, In practice, the security of the growing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Marwan also calls for a total boycott of Israel, Israeli institutions and products in the Palestinian territories and throughout the world. Israeli products should disappear from West Bank shops, Palestinian products should be promoted.

At the same time, Marwan advocates an official end to the charade called “peace negotiations”. This term, by the way, is never heard anymore in Israel. First it was replaced with “peace process”, then “political process”, and lately “the political matter”. The simple word “peace” has become taboo among rightists and most “leftists” alike. It’s political poison.

Marwan proposes to make the absence of peace negotiations official. No more international talk about “reviving the peace process”, no more rushing around of ridiculous people like Tony Blair, no more hollow announcements by Hillary Clinton and Catherine Ashton, no more empty declarations of the “Quartet”. Since the Israeli government clearly has abandoned the two-state solution – which it never really accepted in the first place – keeping up the pretense just harms the Palestinian struggle.

Instead of this hypocrisy, Marwan proposes to renew the battle in the UN. First, apply again to the Security Council for the acceptance of Palestine as a member state, challenging the US to use its solitary veto openly against practically the whole world. After the expected rejection of the Palestinian request by the Council as a result of the veto, request a decision by the General Assembly, where the vast majority would vote in favor. Though this would not be binding, it would demonstrate that the freedom of Palestine enjoys the overwhelming support of the family of nations, and isolate Israel (and the US) even more.

Parallel to this course of action, Marwan insists on Palestinian unity, using his considerable moral force to put pressure on both Fatah and Hamas.

To summarize, Marwan Barghouti has given up all hope of achieving Palestinian freedom through cooperation with Israel, or even Israeli opposition forces. The Israeli peace movement is not mentioned anymore. “Normalization” has become a dirty word.

Prisons Authority spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said Barghouti “has been placed in isolation for a week and denied visits and access to the inmates’ canteen for a month” as a punishment for issuing the statement.

“I call on the Palestinian Authority to end all forms of coordination, security and economic, with the occupation,” wrote Barghouti…..

“The job of the Palestinian security services is to provide security and protection to Palestinian citizens, not to protect the occupation,” said the man widely recognised as the driving force behind the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, and who still commands great respect among Palestinians.

The letter also called on Abbas to “stop marketing the illusion that it is possible to end the occupation through these negotiations.”

……….

“We must affirm the absolute right of our people to resist occupation in all ways, and in the way appropriate to the situation — and at this stage, popular resistance serves our people,” he said.

Marking the tenth anniversary of his imprisonment, this is the first time Marwan Barghouti has called for a complete halt in ‘peace negotiations’.

(Hat tip Esther Riley)

About Annie Robbins

Annie Robbins is Editor at Large for Mondoweiss, a mother, a human rights activist and a ceramic artist. She lives in the SF bay area. Follow her on Twitter @anniefofani

71 Responses

Oppressor does what oppressors do – it’s a predictable instinctive reaction – they simply can’t help it. It’s almost like Israel is doing its best to create the Palestinian Nelson Mandela even if there is currently none.

I know in your upside-down world view, terrorism leads to occupation/Apartheid, not the other way around like most people see this. Mandela was also convicted for “sabotage” (plotting to destroy the South African state by “sabotage”) and was on the US terror list until not too long ago, so you just completed the analogy instead of refuting it.

So Barghoutti is a terrorist convicted by an Israeli military kangaroo court? The one with 99.75% conviction rate? The one where people can be thrown indefinitely in jail with no charges at all? Yeah sure…

The Palestinians bombed Israel with white phosphorous in 2008.
Since 1967 any Israeli who was outside the country has not been allowed back by the Palestinians.
In 1982 18,000 Israelis were murdered when the Palestinians invaded with the Lebanese army and Tel Aviv was destroyed.

He is calling for an end to Fatah corruption — that is to say, (always remunerative) cooperation with Israel (and USA?). End normalization and end the appearance of the possibility of progress where — as this site has long suggested — there is none.

And this will more clearly yhan before shame the nations which have sat back and drunk the USA’s (AIPAC’s) cool-aid. The stuff is junk-food, no good for those who drink it and terrible for Palestinians.

Lastly, he is saying “non-violent”. The world has let far too many people get away with saying the Palestinians are a violent people, asking where is the Palestinian Gandhi. Well, in my view, he is pretty well the Palestinian “everyman” and the world must see it. Thanks, Marwan Barghouti, for leading from a (now solitary) jail cell a people who desperately needed leadership.

“The Crisis of Zionism,” Peter Beinart’s new book on the Jewish establishment’s transformation into a propaganda and lobbying arm for the occupation and the settlements, has a few fresh examples of Washington’s double talk regarding the nature of Israel’s control over the West Bank. It’s something you often hear in private: Every diplomat who has visited Palestinian towns and villages and met with locals knows how bad things are, but it’s impossible to discuss these issues in public because of the possible political consequences. As a matter of fact, Beinart himself is experiencing some of the wrath of the Jewish establishment right now, from hit pieces in the Jewish media to the lowest kind of personal attacks.

Hamas calls directly for the destruction of Israel, and acts on it. Fatah (PLO) have still not recognized Israel, despite the bluff Arafat pulled on Clinton (Bill), the Left in Israel and the rest of the world. The Palestinians will have to recognize and accept a Jewish Israel with direct connections to Jewish history and heritage, and all the talk and lies about Israel, apartheid, non-violent resistance is to just blow smoke up the Palestinian illusion hole, making them feel they do not need to make any concession to the Jewish State. The Jews who are helping prop this up will one day realize the gravity of their own mistakes when they realize that the Palestinians have little intention of making real concessions needed for peace.

>> The Palestinians will have to recognize and accept a Jewish Israel …

As victims of the Jewish state’s 60+ years, ON-GOING and offensive (i.e., not defensive) campaign of aggression, oppression, theft, colonization, destruction and murder, Palestinians undoubtedly recognize that the Jewish state exists.

To expect them – or anyone else – to “accept” the Jewish state as an oppressive, religion-supremacist, expansionist and colonialist state is foolish (to put it mildly).

While the Hamas charter might say this or that about Israel’s illegitimacy – Israel is, in action, destroying what is left of Historic Palestine.

No one – certainly not the Palestinian people – is obligated to accept the legitimacy of the racist, apartheid colonial-settler State of Israel.

That would be like asking Native Americans to accept the legitimacy of Manifest Destiny and the United States.

They need only accept it as a reality (unfortunately for them).

Similarly, Palestinians have accepted that Israel exists. They – and other moral human beings – seek to transform Israel from a racist State that privileges Jews over non-Jews and swallows up the land of the Palestinian people for decades into a democratic State for the citizens of the state rather than a ‘Jewish’ state.

The Palestinians are not obligated to give anything to Israel since all of the settlements are illegal under international law. However, they have made many concessions.

The ‘Palestine papers’ leak revealed that the Palestinian negotiators were open to negotiation to the point of submission.

The Hamas charter is a document. Israeli brutality is tangible, literally in your face. Israelis delude themselves with notions such as greeting each other with the word “Shalom” and dud phrases such as “Israel wants peace.”

Zionism is set permanently to war and conquest.

I like the contrast between Barghouti’s v sign and the symbolism of the Jewish menorah hanging above the judge. The ziobots appropriated the SYMBOLS of the religion but none of its VALUES which is why Barghouthi will win eventually

giladg says:“The Palestinians will have to recognize and accept a Jewish Israel with direct connections to Jewish history and heritage,…”

…only then can the Palestinians become full and proper members of the revered I-Jew-Too-Club, thus allowing the Palestinians to finally join in the spoils of the only true Jewocracy (i.e. as fully fledged citizens of The Jewocratric State of Jewdistan, with full voting rights, preternaturally).

giladg says:“The Jews who are helping prop this up will one day realize the gravity of their own mistakes…”

…and those traitor Jews really ought to have their Jew cards revoked after having their status downgraded to Palestinian Arab. Moreover, those treacherous self-hating Jews-no-longer must be made to understand what this downgrade in their status will actually entail – i.e. a full forfeiture of shares in Ziocorp., and of their right to believe that they are in fact entitled to have their cake (and your cake, and all cake) and to eat it (yes, eat BLOODY WELL ALL OF IT!!!!), too.

“It would be better to declare that Palestinians want Eretz Israeli citizenship and are prepared to go to the UN to get it.”

The white ones don’t even need to wait, if they can somehow get themselves to Mother Russia, or Queens. Once there, and with the right know how, it should be easy enough to fit themselves up with Jew papers, a fake passport and a killer back-story that’s just full of woe.

The Aaliyah route isn’t advisable for Palestinians who can’t pass for white, however, as it’s a lot more hassle. It’s probably better to wait for the UN to do the right thing, if that’s the case.

i don’t know if this occurred to anyone else, something i mentioned in the Mustafa Barghouti thread this morning

ahead of land day, the most famous barghouti, arguably one of the most popular palestinian leaders ever, marwan barghouti made an appeal for a third intifada and a complete halt to PA coordination with israel. diplomatic, security and otherwise.

i think it was probably a coordinated attack (by israel and possibly the pa ‘security’) to draw international attention away from marwan’s statement.

because of the direct challenge to israel/abbas&co it would not surprise me in the least if some pa thugs in conjunction w/the iof thugs purposely thwarted the protest as retaliation for marwan’s letter being read at the rally in ramallah.

jpost put out a report after several news source reported they were punishing marwan:

“It has nothing to do with the content, which is not investigated by us. The letter was sent without Prison Service authorization,” Prison Service spokeswoman Sivan Weizman said.

According to Prison Service regulations, the smuggling of a letter out of prison results in a week’s solitary confinement, and the revoking of cafeteria and visitation rights for the duration of the week.

In the letter, he called on Palestinians to launch a new popular intifada against Israel, saying that “experience has proved that the Palestinians do not have a peace partner in Israel.” He pointed out that the “intifada and resistance” had forced Israel to unconditionally destroy settlements and withdraw from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

Criticizing security coordination between the PA and Israel, Barghouti said that the “role of the Palestinian security forces was to protect the security of the citizen and homeland and not the occupation and settlements.”

The PA should “stop marketing illusions that the occupation could be ended through negotiations,” he stressed.

so i do not put it past the PA and Israel to do a little coordinating together to lash out at a barghouti to teach them a lesson as well as sucking up the news cycle surrounding land day. when i first noticed this story there was one report on the punishment, just one from al arabiyahttp://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/04/02/204751.html

it spread like wildfire and within a few hrs it was covered by everyone from cnn to chicago tribune. not sure what that’s about but it didn’t escape my notice they waited a week to punish him, just long enough for people to not notice any relation to mustafa’s attack. i recall when he was running for election against abbas the israel gov gave him some trouble then too.

Khamis said: “The [PA] regime is very similar to other Arab regimes. If the PA had trust in themselves, they would let journalists get on with their work. But because of their mistakes and corruption, they fear the work of journalists”.

……

They came to his al-Bireh office on Sunday, to investigate his journalism, he said. They seemed most interested in an article he had written about Palestinian youth groups who are critical of the PA, and who call for ending negotiations with Israel. They asked him who he worked for the benefit of.

Khamis told EI they only released him after word got out that Palestinian journalists were planning a demonstration in Ramallah calling for his release.

Khamis said his article about the incident would be published by Zaman Press tonight.

I agree Taxi. I think it is all part of the intent to separate out the comments from the precuror article. What will happen is that most people will not bother clicking on most of the comments, new or old, and that’s the idea.

Better threading of the comment is all I ever asked for, and all I ever needed. Some improvements are not really improvements to free discussion but are designed to produce a bull pen effect, the better to corral the unruly and disobedient. These will always be sold as “better interface”.

April 2, 2012, 5:44 pm

Why unruly and disobedient?

Rude would qualify well enough.

How could anyone be foolish and/or paranoid enough to consider work to improve the user experience would be undertaken with malicious intent at Mondoweiss?

alec, some of us can be a bit unruly, if not rude. That includes yours truly.

Personally I am not crazy about “user interface” in general. Things were just fine before. Anything that hides any comment will make me suspicious because there are certain individuals who, on recent discussions expressed profound desire to eliminate all comments, period. They are people like Donald, Bruce and Green, ie, the “politeness” brigade. There were also the good threads that were closed down because, well, they seemed to be too popular for comfort.

As for “interfaces” – put me down as one who despises the “smart phone” craze. Just another tool to keep people from communicating for real. About facebook, the less is said the better, and Twitter is an idiocy sold to the communicating masses as an “improvement”. Improvement over expression, I suppose and perhaps useful for the ADD generation.

BTW, even when I click on the “show all comments” it continues to hide some selectively.

can we just opt to go back to the way things were? I want to see all the comments all the time and don’t need anyone sorting through them for me.

Alec,
Am having a bad experience clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and clicking and….

H E L P!

Is there one click to open ALL comments? I wanna read and see ALL comments all at the same time – pleeeeeeeeeeeze fix it, reset it, etc.

April 2, 2012, 3:22 pm

Hi ahadhaadam and Taxi,

The new comments feature means when you come to a page you only see new comments saving hunting through hundreds of comments to find the new ones. We are still working on the details.

The best way to avoid having to click out the comments is to read through the full page first before refreshing. After that when you refresh you’ll see all the new comments and won’t have to hunting for new ones.

If you aren’t logged in, you will see all comments (this feature only works for logged in users).

We are likely going to change to expand full threads on click (rather than one comment at a time). Or we may move to a toggle (New/All).

Can you possibly disable the email requiring us to subscribe to comments for each thead we partiticpate in? I would love this to be removed because some days I open my mail and I have a dozen annoying messages clutteriong my mail box asking me to subscribe and most annoying is that I miss out on seeing those messages.

i seriously doubt that kathleen. as i recall some posters were requesting a feature to shrink comments at will. looks like we have an automatic shrink, or a feature to expand comments at will instead. obviously it was done to accommodate us, but what i find strange is if i am reading down a thread and stop to comment in the middle somewhere when push ‘post comment’ it shrinks everything, even the comments i’ve yet to read. so i guess it makes one read the whole thread prior to commenting and then memorizing what everyone said.

it is fun tho coming into a really long thread and seeing only the new comments, i suppose.

alec,
I click on a recent comment, get delivered to that comment, but then a split second later get dunked down to the leave a comment box and have to wade back up to where I wanted to be. Is anyone else experiencing that?
Oops, ditto when I left this comment. Dunked again!

Marwan proposal is quite radical. If the PA stops collaborating with Israeli security in controlling Palestinians the US and EU will likely stop paying 100s of millions of dollars each year for the salaries of these Kapos. These security forces will obviously object. I fear it will lead to more fighting among the Palestinians.

It is, unfortunately, absolutely necessary. When the oppressor hires mercenaries to perform their dirty work, the fight for justice will have to be carried out against these mercenaries. This has been apparent for some time now and it is not clear how the non-violent resisters will prevail.

The Israelis have learned well from British colonialism. Hire native mercenaries to suppress the natives. Israel was quite successful in using Bedouin and Druze troops against the other Palestinians in the beginning and their ability to buy the foot soldiers serving under as Arafat was even a bigger coup. Reversing this will not be easy.

If the PA police went back to barracks life would become very difficult for the settlers especially beyond the wall. They pretend they live in the West Bank like they would anywhere else but they are quite vulnerable and the Israeli Army can’t cover their every landgrabbing move.

The Prosecutor claims that Palestine is merely recognized as a non-member observer, but not a non-member state by the General Assembly. Note that the relevant legal standard under the Vienna Formula requires the Secretary General to accept treaty instruments as depositary from any member state of a UN special agency, including UNESCO.

A dangerous precedent has been established. A rogue state can commit the most serious crimes against the population of a widely recognized state member of a UN agency. The aggressor has been granted legal immunity for those crimes, even though they would be actionable if they had been committed against the population of a UN member or observer state. This revives the discredited constitutive theory of recognition and ignores the right of the Palestinian people to exercise self determination of their own political status. It also ignores the General Assembly resolutions and EU declarations which said that Palestinian statehood is not subject to the peace process or any veto.

The Palestinian Solidarity Community has remained silent in the face of calls for support of the Palestinian statehood bid from Palestinian leaders, like Zoabi, Barghouti, and Mashal.

perhaps they have lost faith in all things procedural at this given time. or perhaps they are thinking very long term wrt bds. i suppose if one lost all faith in the international legal system it would make sense to leave ones fate in the hands of ..the people, the international community of people.

perhaps they have lost faith in all things procedural at this given time.

Sweet Jesus! Bear with me for a moment. The only “procedure” standing in the way of the ICC investigating and prosecuting this case, is for the Secretary General – acting as UN and ICC Depositary for multilateral treaties – to recognize the statehood of Palestine.

That entails the mere formality of the President or Foreign Minister of Palestine accepting the standing invitation from the General Assembly of the United Nations to members of any UN specialized agency, like UNESCO, to sign a letter of accession to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (See Articles 81 and 83) and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (see Articles 48 and 50).

The procedure used by the Secretary General in doubtful cases (that the Prosecutor mentioned in his written opinion) is not applicable to member states of UN specialized agencies or state parties to UN multilateral treaties. So nothing would prevent Palestine from depositing an instrument of accession and becoming a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in accordance with Article 12(1) and Article 125.

Under the terms of Article 15(5) of the Rome Statute, the Prosecutor should have obtained a decision from the Pre-Trial Chamber. In any event, his refusal to investigate the complaint at this time cannot preclude a future investigation if Palestine accedes to the Rome Statute or UN Charter. The last section of the Prosecutor’s “update” on the situation in Palestine contains an allusion to that fact – and the Israeli Foreign Ministry has already taken exception to the opinion.
*http://www.icc-cpi.int/NR/rdonlyres/C6162BBF-FEB9-4FAF-AFA9-836106D2694A/284387/SituationinPalestine030412ENG.pdf

So the Palestinian Civil Society organizations and the people of Palestine only need to get their own government to sign two or three form letters. Nobody needs to vote on anything and there isn’t any veto to overcome, just their own apathy.

Support Mondoweiss’s independent journalism today

Mondoweiss brings you the news that no one else will. Your tax-deductible donation enables us to deliver information, analysis and voices stifled elsewhere. Please give now to maintain and grow this unique resource.